TIMESTORM (Part II) (spoilers)

Art by Stephen Sullivan

The commander of the Time Corps' Last Resort Division is named Bora and she is one of the Kleibor – an alien race from Pacesetter's STAR ACE® role-playing game.  Bora “looks like a giant, highly intelligent polar bear.”  Just what makes a polar bear look “highly intelligent” is left unstated.  Glasses?  Pocket protector?  Anyway, Bora assigns two missions to the player characters.  First, a Temporal Disaster Wave will “presumably wipe out the Time Corps' existence” in 18.5 SDS hours.  Second, the player characters must cope with a Time Storm by finding “the Parallel, time, and place where this Time Storm erupted, and prevent the storm from starting.”  Also, the player characters should “make whatever repairs [they] can to the Parallels [they] visit along the way.”  Actually, as the text makes apparent later on, preventing the Time Storm also undoes all of its effects.

The Temporal Disaster Wave (or TDW) evidently began when Arabic numerals were introduced to Augustan Rome.  As a result, “Mathematical science explodes. . .[and] the Roman Empire still thrives” until the 21st Century, at least.  A mission team was deployed two days previous.  Since they have not reported, “obviously, they did not succeed.”  So, the player characters must go back in time, tell the first team to desist, and assume their mission.  The send-off for the player characters is rather brusque in keeping with the urgency of the situation; however, they are also insulted as the briefing ends:

She glances at the side door, and it slides open to admit four alien agents.  (Kleibors have innate skills in telekinesis.)  Two 12-foot bears and three 8-foot brown lizards step inside.  They glance at you haughtily, and one asks, “Gees, we aren't teaming up with them are we?”

(I suppose 'Gees' is the diminutive form for the spiritual savior of 8-foot brown lizards.)  I would be inclined to reply with something like:  “Excuse me, I have to go save the Continuum – I hope your penny ante species manages to survive.”  Reptilians can be such jerks.

When the player characters go back in time and address the previous mission team – by astounding coincidence – the Time Storm touches down at the landing site.  Unless the player characters manage to get out of the way, they are taken by the Time Storm:

Whirling helpless in a black, disorienting void, you tumble and careen past countless other writhing, spinning beings.  Some are alien, some humanoid, but all are panic-striken and powerless.  Their screams are deafening, though it is difficult to separate the cries of other victims from the piercing howl of the tempest itself.

Eventually, the player characters find themselves on Parallel A-1023.  Herein lies the likely reason Timestorm™ has not been republished even though the rest of the TIMEMASTER™ catalog is available.  Parallel A-1023 represents the reality of Wabbit Wampage, a board game published by Pacesetter in 1985 and designed by Marc Acres.  You might as well cross-sell if you can.  Presumably, in order to republish Timestorm™, one must also have the Wabbit Wampage license.

Wabbit Wampage simulates a television cartoon with characters like Thugs Bunny.  One of these characters is depicted on the Timestorm™ cover, hand-in-paw with Cleopatra.  The Wabbit Parallel is one of “Violent, senseless mayhem,” as befits a cartoon.  We learn that “creatures on A-1023 never die; they simply get 'whomped,' soon returning to action.”  However, visitors to the Parallel – such as the player characters – remain mortal.  In a mailbox, the player characters find a note from their future selves who have (or will have) mail ordered cartoon chronoscooters from the Acme Company.  Once the letter is read, the cartoon chronoscooters arrive via parachute, which the player characters can use to continue the adventure in ancient Rome.  The letter contains the phrase:  “After a few hair-raising adventures. . .”  Given the puns of Wabbit Wampage, Acres should have used “hare-raising.”

Does this mean there's a Parallel for every game?  Is there a Parallel that consists of a chess (or chaturanga) board and beings that are the equivalent of the pieces?  More importantly, is there a Hungry Hungry Hippos Parallel?

The Temporal Disaster Wave was engineered by “Le Voleur, the infamous, mysterious renegade.”  Le Voleur's scheme was to threaten the existence of the Time Corps, demanding that they release his compatriot renegades from the Prison Parallel in order for him to negate the TDW.  Of course, a threat is only effective if the target is aware of it and Le Voleur has delayed issuing the threat.  This is because Le Velour “doesn't know how quickly the wave is advancing, and he wants to to leave the Corps with as little room to maneuver as possible.”

At the onset of his scheme, Le Voleur sent two henchmen to Al Capone's death and injected him “with a 58th century drug.”  Said drug had the effect of making “Capone appear lifeless, while holding his body in a state of suspended animation.”  The henchmen exhumed Capone the day after was buried and took him to Rome.  There, “Le Voleur revived Capone and cured him of his disease,” although he lacks medical skills.  Le Voleur then convinced Capone “to start up gangster operations” in Augustan Rome.

. . . Capone revelled in the chance to relive his “glory days” in an environment with, as he put it, “no feds and a wide open city.”  He recruited the lowest, most violent scum from the Roman streets, making them “soldiers” or “button men” in his new organization.  With the help of Le Voleur's band of renegades, he imported handguns, automatic weapons, [cars,] and clothing from the American 1920s.  He even received language implants from Le Velour's labs, so his men would look and speak just like “old time” Chicago gangsters.  In six months, Capone had taken over most of Rome's gambling operations.  Soon, his organization would conquer the liquor and slave trades too.

Remember, the Temporal Disaster Wave was started not by firearms or internal combustion engines in ancient Rome, but Arabic numerals.  We learn that the Praetorian Guard “would be willing to put an end to both [Capone] and his band of thugs, but the Emperor won't allow it (for what reason, the soldiers cannot imagine).”  The Emperor's reason is never disclosed.  In the course of the adventure, Capone attempts to double-cross Le Voleur and steal a time machine, but Le Voleur tries to escape, going back in time so as to “cancel the abduction of Al Capone.”  Which means the Temporal Disaster Wave would not have occurred.

Whether or not Le Voleur escapes, the Time Storm brings to Rome “three 4-foot cartoon rabbits” armed with a shotgun and chainsaws.  They appear at the dénouement of the TDW plot.  “Obviously,” we learn, “the wabbits are displaced from another Parallel, and the PCs should (as part of their Time Storm mission) return them to their natural home,” which is the Wabbit Parallel.  Returning the wabbits requires that the player characters defeat them.  The prospect is not easy since – as cartoons – they don't “seem the least bit dampened by. . .wounds.”  In order to conclude the mission successfully, the player characters must deliver the wabbits to Parallel A-1023, where the next adventure in the campaign takes place.

TIMESTORM (Part I)

Art by Stephen Sullivan

Over the course of a page, the Timetricks supplement describes a theoretical concept called a Time Storm (two words):

A Time Storm is a series of completely random, unpredictable changes that could affect any number of Parallels, even intermixing people, things, and events among the Parallels.  To get some idea of what a Time Storm would be like, imagine a box of dry spaghetti.  Take the dry strands of spaghetti out of the box and lay them out, one next to the other, on the surface of a table.  You have a rough model of the Continuum now:  each strand of spaghetti is like a Parallel.   Now, imagine that you’ve cooked all those strands of spaghetti and dumped them in a heap on a plate.  That’s roughly what the Continuum would look like after a Time Storm.  And, just to make matters interesting, it is possible (at least in theory) that a Time Storm would never end; the tangling and mixing of people, things, and events from all Parallels could go on forever.

In 1986 – the year after the publication of Timetricks – Pacesetter released Timestorm™ (now one word).  At 96 pages, “Timestorm™ is a short campaign of six adventures, each one playable in an evening or two.”  The back cover admonishes, “These adventures are so tumultuous, so wild, and so deadly that we recommend you don't use regular Time Corps agents.”  Included with Timestorm™ are “eight ready-to-play heroes from the Corps' infamous 'Last Resort Division'. . .”  Timetricks describes this division:

          The Interparallel Tactical Command for Temporal Realignment is the most exclusive, elite force in the Time Corps.  This division consists of 500 hand-picked agents recruited from throughout the Continuum.  Included in the division are the duplicates of some of the greatest heros [sic] from both history and literature in over 100 Parallels. . .
          This division is reserved exclusively for two types of missions:  those that other agents have already tried and failed to accomplish, and those considered so dangerous, difficult, or both, that no other group of agents would have any chance for success.

With regard to the player characters provided in Timestorm™, we learn that “each one is a 'duplicate' of a hero or heroine from Earth's history.”  'Duplicate' in this sense means an analogue from a Parallel where the person had negligible influence on the timeline.  These characters are preferred for the Timestorm™ campaign in that each “has a special ability that PCs from the Earth Specialty Division do not have.”  Although eight characters are provided, “The optimum number of PCs is six.”  Half of the characters are male and the other half, female.  Here are synopses of the eight characters:

Boudicca
Presuming a lack of name recognition on the part of the consumer, the back cover informs us that she is “a Celtic warrior queen.”  In addition to Paranomal Memory (which all of the characters have), Boudicca has the Ignore Pain talent.  Her special ability is an “ancient Celtic battle cry,” which causes a single opponent to be terrorized if the opponent fails a Willpower check.  This ability can be used “against a given foe only once per encounter.”  Other than skills a Celtic warrior queen might be expected to have, Boudicca has the following skills at Master level:  Time Corps Stunner, Pilot, and Investigation.  (All of the characters have Time Corps Stunner and Pilot at Master level.)

Sgt. Striker, U.S.M.C.
About Striker, we are informed by the first sentence of his description:  “a gung-ho sergeant from the U.S. Marine Corps in World War I, is an almost unstoppable human fighting machine.”  Actually, there are suggestions that Striker is a veteran of WW2 rather than WW1; he was born in 1905 and his Historical Specialty is “United States and Japan, 1805 - 1945.”  His additional talents are:  Ignore Pain, Paranormal Talent Detection, Parallel Identification, and Temporal Tracking.  When Striker suffers an injury in combat, he takes only half damage with a successful Luck check.  (His Luck score is 56.)

Amelia Earhart
Timestorm™ describes her as:  “One of the greatest pilots of all time.”  Actually, Earhart was not a great pilot; she was a capable pilot with a knack for self-promotion.  If I were choosing a team of adventures and the fate of the Continuum was on the line, I would be reluctant to select someone whose career ended as hers did.  Fortunately, there are alternate, contemporaneous aviatrices; to name merely three:  Ruth Nichols, Elinor Smith, and Pancho Barnes.  Earhart's special ability regards aerial combat:  “she can choose which side has initiative in a given round” and she has a +20 attack modifier.

Robin Hood
“Since he is one of the greatest longbowmen of all time,” Robin can “fire two arrows at the same time” and he can “ignore completely the reload time required of other characters.”  His Longbow skill is 131, one less than his skill with Polearms or Swords.  (His Time Corps Stunner skill is 133.)  His Agility score is 80, which is the normal maximum, and his Dexterity is 78.  I can't find fault with Robin Hood, but I might be more inclined to select an archer with experience on a cosmic level; someone like Shen Yi.  If I had a concern with female representation in the party, I would consider Annie Oakley.

Cleopatra
We learn, “Egalitarian values seem unnatural to her, and even as an agent of the Corps, Cleopatra longs for days when she held power on an almost world-wide scale.”  For a more 'egalitarian' heroine, I would select Mata Hari or either of the Claflin sisters.  Anyway, Cleopatra's special ability allows her “to gain the special attention and favor of individual human males.”  Her Personality score is 80 and she receives +20 modifier when making a Personality check.  An “NPC male falls in love with Cleopatra” on a “C” result.  Her paranormal talents include:  Telepathic Probe, Significance Sensing, Adaptation, Telepathic Sending, and (somehow) Demorean Telepathy.

Merlin
This version of Merlin has adapted to technology since his recruitment by the Time Corps.  His skills include:  Computers, Demolitions, and Advanced Temporal Engineering.  Given that the Timestorm™ Introduction states that Advanced Temporal Engineering is necessary for the campaign, it would seem that Merlin is a requisite member of the party.  His special ability equates to three magic spells:  Dragon's Breath (projection of fog that Merlin and his companions can see through), Enchant Weapon (a melee weapon gains a +20 modifier), and Change Appearance (“This spell changes the appearance of one person or creature. . . [which] can be made to appear up to 50% larger or smaller than actual size.”)

Agatha Marple

Agatha Marple is a fictional personality “once removed.”  She arose from a spoof of the mystery novels written by Agatha Christie . . . who created the character Miss Jane Marple.  Unknown to Christie, Agatha Marple became part of historical reality on Parallel M-14. . .

Seriously?  Miss Marple?  The very Continuum is threatened and Miss Marple is on the 'Last Resort' team?  If Reality is about to be destroyed, I want a detective who can bust heads and take a punch; someone like Mike Hammer.

Hercules
The description for this character begins, “Hercules originated on Parallel M-7, a Parallel where T-0's Greek mythology is a part of historical reality.”  Of course, Hercules isn't part of Greek mythology; he's part of Roman mythology.  Just go with Roman mythology if you want to use Hercules; otherwise, use his Greek name – Heracles.  Anyway, “Hercules” has a Strength of 100 and a Stamina of 120.  The normal maximum for both of these abilities is 80.  Whether Hercules or Heracles, I would rather not leave the fate of the universe in the hands of someone who flipped out and killed his family.  Why not give other strongmen a chance?  Milo of Croton, for instance.